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The Root of Making Good Decisions

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There are lots of different formal and informal approaches to making decisions. But at the end of the day making a good decision comes down to one thing: Knowing the fundamental governing principles of the area. Usually there is just one.

For example, as I posted earlier today, with the economic policy of a nation, the governing principle is to maximize people’s freedom to the greatest extent while preserving the rule of law. In deciding where to work, the guiding principle is: where can I have the greatest impact with the gifts I’ve been given? In managing an organization, the guiding principle is to make employees’ strengths productive for the performance of the organization while minimizing weaknesses.

Once you understand the governing principles of an area, most decisions fall into line. More on this in the days and months to come.

How to Get the Mail

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Here’s one of the most basic productivity functions of all, and yet probably most of us never think about how we do it: Getting the mail.

I actually have to go get the mail right now. Why don’t I go do that, and then I’ll come back and summarize how I go through it.

Processing the Mail is the Same as Processing Your In-Box

OK, here we go. First, I’d normally actually just put it in my in-box, since it’s the middle of the afternoon, and process it the next time I process my in-box. And that’s the first point: The mail is just another form of input to be processed along with every other form of input you get. So in one sense I could stop this post right now, because getting the mail really reduces to processing your in-box. But, I will continue.

The Three Rules of Processing Stuff

Second, I go through the items one by one (very quickly). Looks like I have about 15 items. David Allen gives the three cardinal rules of processing, which apply here:

  1. Process the top item first
  2. Process one item at a time
  3. Never put anything back into in

The Two Questions when Processing Anything

Third, with each item I ask myself two questions: What is this? and What’s the next action? This is because before you can know what to do with something, you need to know what it is. Once you know what it is, you can determine how to handle it (that is, define the next action).

When No Action is Required

With most stuff, this is easy and takes about 0.25 seconds. Some things have no actions required. For example, an item of junk mail gets trashed.

Handling Quick Actions: The Two Minute Rule

Some things involve very quick actions. With these I apply David Allen’s “two minute rule”: if you can do it in two minutes or less, do it right away. So a newsletter or such from an organization I give to gets a quick look, for example, and then I toss it (or determine the larger action required by it and process it accordingly).

Handling Longer than Two Minute Actions

Then there are some things that involve more than 2 minutes of action. I have something in this category before me right now: the statement for my money market account. I have actually noticed that 90% of my 2-minute plus actions that come up fall into 1 of 6 categories. I’ve set up a group of pending files for these: bills to pay, notes to process, receipts to enter, other financial to enter, to read, and to file. This one falls into the “other financial to enter” category—I need to reconcile this with my Quicken–, so I put it in that file. (I go through those files every Saturday, by the way—I wouldn’t put anything in an action file without a regularly scheduled task to actual dispense of those actions. I put these regularly scheduled actions on my “action calendar,” which I’ll talk about down the road)

Now I have before me two post cards that the grandparents sent to our kids (ages 5 and 3) while they were on their trip to DC. I put these to my right in a temporary “out” pile, which is where I put stuff that I need to give to my wife or kids or take somewhere else in the house.

The next item is my 2009 vehicle tabs. Here I have two things to do: The stickers themselves go in my “out” box, and I will put them on my car when I take that stuff to where it goes. But I also want to keep the registration card that came with them, so I put that in my “to file” pile.

The next item is something from Dish Network saying I have to upgrade my DVR with these new smart cards they’ve sent, or it will stop working in two weeks. Good grief. This is why life is so complicated and we need productivity systems in the first place.

Now I have my IRA statement. There is a newsletter with an article on “what you need to know about bear markets,” which I’ll give 10 seconds to. There is also an update to the “custodial agreement” (whatever that is). In previous years I probably would have filed that with my IRA stuff, but I’m getting tired of the information glut, so I’m just going to throw that away. I put the actual statement into my “other financial to enter” file.

Now I have my mortgage statement. We’re not on automatic withdrawal because we plan on moving soon and I wanted to save the time of setting that up. Not sure if that actually saved me time, but oh well. I put the bottom portion in my “bills to pay” file and the actual statement in my “to file” pile.

There are a few magazines that I put in my “to read file,” and now I’m done. Now what I’m going to do is quickly take my “out” stuff where it goes (put the post cards for our kids in my wife’s in box, the tabs on the car, and that smart card in my DVR), file my “to file” stuff, and get on with my day. On Saturday morning I’ll clear out the two minute plus actions that I put into my “other financial to enter” and “bills to pay” files.

Nothing this time involved a project (a more-than-two-action outcome) or had to go on my next action list. Down the road I’ll be posting some about those lists and how to use them effectively.

Forward-Thinking Leadership

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I was at the Catalyst 2008 conference at the end of last week. The speakers included some top-notch business thinkers, including Jim Collins, Seth Godin, and Tim Sanders. Andy Stanley gave a very useful talk based around five really intriguing quotes. Here are a few of them:

“What do I believe is impossible to do in my field…but if it could be done would fundamentally change my business?”

“If we got kicked out and the board brought in a new CEO, what would he do? Why shouldn’t we walk out the door, come back in, and do it ourselves?”

“When your memories exceed your dreams, the end is near.”

Here’s what I like about these quotes: They focus not only on doing existing things better, but on doing new things altogether. We need more people thinking along these lines.

What This Blog is About, Part 2

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There are a lot of blogs on productivity. So why start another one?

This comes down to the question of the angle this blog will take. There are a lot of great productivity blogs out there. Lifehacker hits productivity from the technological angle, Merlin Mann at 43 Folders writes about how to find the time and attention to do your best creative work, and Timothy Ferris writes about experiments in lifestyle design. So what’s my angle?

The most basic answer is that I am looking at productivity through the lens of decision-making. Being productive and effective is about making good decisions. Your calendar and projects list, if you have them, are ultimately decision-making tools.

The angle of this blog is also unique in the way it will try to tie together some divergent themes that nonetheless need to go together. Here are the things I want to tie together in this blog:

  1. Personal productivity and organizational productivity.
  2. The runway and the 50,000 foot level.
  3. Sound thinking and helpful action.
  4. The past and the future.

Tying Together Personal Productivity and Organizational Productivity

This is what I talked about in part 1 of this article and in my post “Broadening the Concept of Productivity.” In sum, I think productivity is not just about making ourselves more effective, but about knowing what will make our organizations and communities and society more effective. So I’m going to talk about not only how we can be more productive as individuals, but also how our organizations and communities can be more effective as well.

Tying Together the Runway and the 50,000 Foot Level

Here’s my productivity journey in a nutshell: David Allen’s Getting Things Done opens up a whole new world. Yet there are a few “snags” that I think the system has (which can be overcome). One of the snags is that GTD is great at the runway and 10,000 foot level (projects), but is less developed at the 20,000 foot and above level (roles, goals, and mission).

Stephen Covey’s books The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and First Things First, on the other hand, are superb at the 20,000 foot and above level. Yet they are weak in laying out a workable system for translating those plans into action at the project and next action levels.

What is needed is a productivity approach that synthesizes the best of Allen and Covey. I think I’ve done this for my own productivity system that I’ve built for managing my own life, and will be blogging a lot on how these two perspectives fit together. The result is a system of thinking that successfully ties the big picture (20,000 foot and above) to the every day (the runway of next actions and 10,000 foot level of projects).

Tying Together Sound Thinking and Helpful Action

In one sense it’s a bit odd that I’ve named this blog What’s Best Next, because that sounds almost like all I care about is what we do, when in reality I am a firmly believer of the primacy of thought. Not as a replacement for action, but as the director and leader of what we actually do. I think we make the best decisions on what to do when we understand the guiding principles of an area.

This is in now way, in no way, to say that thought alone is sufficient. It is to say that the most effective actions stem ultimately from the way we think, and if you approach anything piecemeal, you are unlikely to get good results. I love this quote from Roger Martin’s book The Opposable Mind: “Instead of attempting to learn from observing the actions of leaders, I prefer to swim upstream to the antecedent of doing: thinking. My critical question is not what various leaders did, but how their cognitive processes produced their actions” (The Opposable Mind, p. 19). Great thinking is the seedbed of great actions. This blog is about what’s best next, not just what’s next.

Tying Together the Past and the Future

And of course this blog is not only about what’s best next, but also what’s best next. We are looking ahead—both far off to what are the most productive actions for the long-term, as well as how to make the best decision about what to literally do next.

I love how Jim Collins relates that when he would ask Peter Drucker what the favorite book he wrote was, Drucker would always say “the next one.” That’s how I think: the best things are always to come. And knowing what’s best next requires knowing what came before. We have a ton to learn from the past. I want to think of what’s best, next, in the context of the whole.